At the turn of the twentieth century, Boston's musical life was in an exhilarating state of development. Amid its burgeoning modernism and industrial expansion, the city's residents had an almost insatiable hunger for entertainment and personal enrichment, and opportunities for amusement and cultural exposure beyond the domestic sphere were plentiful and diverse. The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) had been at the city's musical centre since 1881, complemented by distinguished soloists, professional and amateur string quartets and other chamber groups, choral ensembles and conservatory students. On any given day, music rang through concert halls, theatres, schools, hotels and other venues across the city (many in operation since the mid-nineteenth century), and later in Symphony Hall, which opened in 1900 as the city's cultural gem and the permanent home of the BSO. Boston's musical life also extended to nearby Cambridge through activities at Harvard, and approximately 50 miles west to Worcester, recognized internationally for the illustrious Worcester Music Festival, held annually since 1858.Footnote 1 Events and discussions in the private salons of elite Bostonians such as Isabella Stewart Gardner also stimulated local trends in fashion, cuisine, art and literature, as well as music. But for the general concert audience, the abundance of public performances brought a seemingly endless supply of new repertoire and opportunities to experience it. In many ways, Boston's musical development ran in closest parallel to that of New York, similarly boasting an enviable concert life, conservatories to compete with those in Europe, wealthy patrons to offer financial support, and a thriving music consumerism of publications and instrumental sales. Each city also relied on a trusted circle of critics whose concert reviews and essays for local newspapers and journals guided musical tastes, offering mainstream consumers the most immediate and ongoing education regarding the performances they heard. The members of the so-called ‘old guard’ – in New York, Henry Krehbiel, William Henderson, Henry Finck and James Huneker, and in Boston, William Apthorp, Louis C. Elson, Philip Hale and Henry Taylor Parker – offered expert commentary on musical activities at home and abroad, through distinctive styles of discourse that their readers came to expect.
Nevertheless, despite the clear parallels between these competing musical centres, by the turn of the century a divergence in musical interests had grown evident through both concert programming and critical writings. While New York was staunchly devoted to Austro-German instrumental works, Wagner's music dramas, and Italian operas (as was the case in other American cities), Boston moved towards an aesthetic that would also embrace French music as a complement to the other repertoire.Footnote 2 This ‘French connection’, as Ellen Knight has described cultural endeavours in Boston during this period, was far more an inclination towards French style than it was the purposeful rejection of German influences that would occur on a national scale around the First World War (vividly on display in Boston through Karl Muck's resignation as director of the BSO in 1918, and his subsequent deportation).Footnote 3 The broader interest in French culture had already been established in other contexts. Since the 1830s Boston's noted writers and artists had pursued French travel for their personal improvement (Samuel Morse, Charles Sumner and Oliver Wendell Holmes all studied in Paris), and subsequent generations with strong ties to the city followed (for example, Samuel Clemens [Mark Twain], Henry James, Henry Adams and Edith Wharton).Footnote 4 For the general public, as early as the 1870s (the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent rebuilding of Paris serving as a point of departure) Boston newspapers followed the trends in French fashion, cuisine and etiquette, as well as the intellectual and creative pursuits, and social interactions of elite Parisians and visiting Americans.Footnote 5 As Boston's critics wrote with interest about these topics, they provided a sophisticated model for local readers to emulate. The growing availability of both imported products and domestic imitations – especially French literature, art and haute couture fashions – brought a touch of France closer to them. And for music consumers, local publishers such as the Boston Music Company, Oliver Ditson and others produced some of the earliest American editions of French music (including works by Fauré, beginning in the 1890s.) This facilitated the inclusion of French music on concert programmes, as did the influx of French and French-trained musicians attracted to Boston by the ongoing development of music schools, performance venues and the BSO. Additionally, the potential support from influential patrons such as Gardner, Fanny Peabody Mason and Henry Lee Higginson (who founded the BSO) offered financial incentive for these musicians to choose Boston as their professional home.
By the 1890s, educators such as Elson (then head of music theory at New England Conservatory (NEC)) began to identify the value of Paris for American music students as an alternative to Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and other European cities. In fact, Elson was the first to do so, in his European Reminiscences (1891) – this was decades before Nadia Boulanger worked with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston and her other ‘first generation’ American students at Fontainebleau in the 1920s, and before Boulanger herself travelled to the United States for her first lecture tour in 1925.Footnote 6 An important by-product of the earlier cultural transfer was the introduction of new French repertoire to the city. Vocal and instrumental recitals regularly included French music, and within its first decade, the BSO performed works of Camille Saint-Saëns, Emmanuel Chabrier and Jules Massenet, soon followed by Vincent d'Indy, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.Footnote 7 The fact that French music was becoming an almost proprietary commodity in Boston did not go unnoticed by Elson, Hale and other local critics and educators, whose writings for daily newspapers such as the Boston Globe, Boston Journal, Boston Evening Transcript, Boston Herald and Boston Daily Advertiser increasingly favoured French musical topics, and reported on concerts that included French repertoire. (Indeed, even critics beyond the city noted the ‘Gallic spell’ under which Boston seemed to have fallen by 1905.Footnote 8) These individuals – the leaders of Boston's musical life – not only identified a Francophile musical trend, but further advanced it through their writings, even as they struggled to articulate the particular character of this music.
For some critics in Boston, French music embodied a distinctive clarity of texture and melodic delicacy, combined with a rich harmonic language and unusual voice leading that differentiated French composers from their Austro-German counterparts. For others, it was simply tender, charming and elegant music that could only be defined as ‘French’.Footnote 9 Edward Burlingame Hill (1872–1960), a respected composer and professor of music at Harvard (who later taught Thomson, Piston, Elliott Carter, Leonard Bernstein and others), addressed this topic in two essays for The Etude, beginning with ‘The Rise of Modern French Music’ (1914).Footnote 10 Ten years later, his volume Modern French Music (1924) marked an important expansion of this study, drawing on his individual essays concerning Fauré, d'Indy and Ravel.Footnote 11 In Hill's writings, and others coming from Boston, this identity as French music was often framed in an attractive light. However, in cities that were initially less receptive to this music, such an identity often inhibited a positive response.
New York stands as an important point of comparison to Boston in this regard, as observed in both professional and amateur music criticism. In a particularly colourful letter to the editor of The New York Times (1905), a disgruntled audience member of the touring BSO (with guest director Vincent d'Indy) describes the ‘distressing’ experience of having heard an all-French programme (including Fauré's Suite Pelléas et Mélisande, as well as works by d'Indy, Franck and Dukas). He writes on behalf of the New York audience:
Nobody wanted this alleged music, and nobody seemed to like it when they heard it. Why cannot these splendid players give us the real music that we like? I think The Times has been altogether too lenient in criticising this crazy stuff; it ought to have been shown up much more strongly. I for one want to make a protest.Footnote 12
The headline reads, ‘Doesn't Like d'Indy’, although perhaps more accurate would be, ‘Doesn't Like French Music’. To be sure, New York audiences were more familiar with the traditional Austro-German symphonic repertoire typically heard there, and this particular response suggests a knee-jerk reaction to what the BSO was offering. This attitude would begin to change within just a few years, as the American premiere of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1908) and the introduction of other French repertoire in New York displaced some of the question of its overall value. However, in 1905 a vocal resistance to this music was still quite present there.Footnote 13
By then Fauré had already proved to be a favourite on Boston concert programmes and in critical discussions, amid the earliest expressions of interest in French music. The year 1892 served as a gateway for this response to Fauré, as it brought the first documented public performances of any of his music in Boston. That January, violinist and composer Charles Martin Loeffler (1861–1935) gave the American premiere of the First Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 13. Later that year, a recital by mezzo-soprano Lena Little included ‘Au cimetière’ and ‘Clair de lune’ – the first of Fauré's mélodies ever performed publicly there.Footnote 14 Over the next three decades, other mélodies, piano solos and chamber works by Fauré, recognized today as recital staples, were introduced into the local repertoire, with some selections heard numerous times, and made widely available by Boston's music publishers.Footnote 15 Additionally, the BSO introduced the suites Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 (1904), and Shylock, Op. 57, and to the Prélude to the opera Pénélope (both in 1919), although Pelléas gained particular recognition through repeated performances. The most glaring omission from today's perspective is the Requiem, Op. 48; its American premiere did not take place until 1931 (Philadelphia), and was not heard in Boston until Boulanger's guest directorship of the BSO in 1938.Footnote 16 A substitute of sorts can be found much earlier in Fauré's cantata La Naissance de Vénus, Op. 29 (1882), performed in English as The Birth of Venus at the Worcester Music Festival (1902), with a massive chorus, vocal soloists and BSO members. Over a 30-year period, local audiences were exposed to an astonishing number of Fauré's compositions, even compared to other French composers, with concert reviews and critical writings to support and encourage this activity while he was still living. And when he died, on 4 November 1924, Fauré was celebrated in a high-profile memorial concert given by the BSO (directed by newcomer Serge Koussevitzky), an honour not yet extended to any other composer.
This response to Fauré was not observable in other American cities, as is suggested by the absent or relatively limited discussions of this composer and reviews of his music in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Los Angeles, for example. This was not unlike the early response to Fauré in England, and even to some extent his native France, where he was often dismissed as a ‘salon composer’, whose music had a limited reach compared to that of his French contemporaries. The large-scale compositions of Saint-Saëns, Massenet, d'Indy and Debussy often overshadowed even Fauré's orchestral music. In terms of their familiarity to Americans, some of these composers – Saint-Saëns, d'Indy and later Ravel – also benefitted from their American tours. By contrast, Fauré never visited the United States; he had this in common with Debussy, although the latter gained a broader international response far earlier. The fact that Fauré's music made such an impression in Boston that his physical presence could practically be felt in absentia is important to recognize.
Why Boston? One might say that the stars were aligned there to facilitate such a response to Fauré during this period. To be sure, the interest in French culture was already well in place. But Fauré's reputation as an individual composer also benefitted from his numerous admirers, many who held positions of influence in the city even beyond the traditional musical circles. In some cases, they formed important social networks for composers, performers and artists. For example, Isabella Stewart Gardner is known to have requested selections by Fauré for performance in her salon beginning in 1894. (Loeffler, Harrison Keller, Heinrich Gebhard and Ferruccio Busoni all performed Fauré for Gardner at various times.Footnote 17) Another admirer was painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) – also a personal and professional contact of Gardner and a close friend of Loeffler since the 1880s. His portraits of Fauré, whom he met in London, are well known. But Sargent was also a talented amateur pianist, with a fondness for modern French music. Indeed, he initially bonded with Loeffler through their mutual admiration of Fauré (they played through his First Violin Sonata, Op. 13, in Boston, in a private performance several years before Loeffler's public premiere of the sonata.Footnote 18) Loeffler and Sargent became lifelong friends, and, along with Gardner, maintained a connection to Fauré over the years, the three representing an informal interdisciplinary network of sorts. Gardner corresponded with Fauré in letters, as did Loeffler, who also visited him in Paris.Footnote 19 And, in a more practical display of support, in 1921 Loeffler and Sargent were among those in what could be considered by then Fauré's ‘Boston circle’ (along with Hill and Fanny Peabody Mason), who sent Fauré a gift of 2,000 francs to alleviate his financial stress following his retirement as director of the Paris Conservatoire. (Fauré reciprocated through gifts of manuscripts, and the dedication of his Second Cello Sonata, Op. 117, to Loeffler.Footnote 20) Such interactions sustained for decades illustrate a lasting personal connection between Fauré and Boston, a city he never actually visited. Even from a distance, he had found a degree of admiration and advocacy that few could have predicted. And in the public sphere, through a period of more than 30 years of performance and critical activity, Fauré's name became one of the first of the modern French school to have genuine meaning for this audience.
The remainder of this article considers critical discussions surrounding landmark performances of Fauré's music in Boston between 1892 and 1924. Not only does this time frame encompass, on one end, the first known public performance there of a work by Fauré, and on the other, a high-profile memorial concert in his honour, but it also represents an important period in the holistic development of Boston as a cultural centre (with a strong inclination towards French commodities, including French music), and the position Fauré's music acquired within it. Examples include Loeffler's premiere of the First Violin Sonata, Op. 13 (1892), the English-language version of La Naissance de Vénus, Op. 29, at the Worcester Music Festival (1902), the BSO premiere of the Suite Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 (1904), plus Koussevitzky's BSO concert ‘To the Memory of Gabriel Fauré’ (1924). The frequency with which a wide range of Fauré's music was performed and discussed in the city during this period, in a variety of contexts, ensured that Boston audiences were well educated about this composer long before their counterparts in other American cities. These particular examples illuminate his early reception in Boston as it aligned with the local Francophile aesthetic, and as a reflection of the broader cultural transfer for which Fauré's music often served as a point of illustration.
First Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 13
Jean-Michel Nectoux describes Fauré's First Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 13 (1875–1876), as ‘something of a miracle when we consider its apparent independence from anything that had preceded it in this difficult genre of chamber music’.Footnote 21 And to be sure, comparable works of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, for example – still performed frequently in Paris at the time of Fauré's composition – cast a long shadow for French composers to overcome in the late-nineteenth century. However, Fauré's four-movement sonata brought a new perspective to the genre. While the movement titles suggest tradition – Allegro molto, Andante, Scherzo (Allegro vivo) and Allegro quasi presto – the sonata as a whole was quickly recognized for its originality. Following its premiere at the Société Nationale de Musique in January 1877 (given by Marie Tayau, with Fauré himself at the piano), Saint-Saëns remarked in an essay for Le journal de musique:
There is in this sonata everything that can seduce those of delicate tastes, the novelty of forms, searching modulations and curious sonorities, the use of the most unforeseen rhythms; over all this hovers a charm, which envelops the entire work and makes the crowd of ordinary listeners accept as quite natural the most intense audacity. There is no stronger work in those which have appeared for several years in France and Germany, and there are none so charming. Mr Fauré placed himself at the level of the masters. A few more compositions of this value, and he will have claimed one of the most noble names in contemporary art.Footnote 22
Indeed, the sonata maintained its popularity in Paris even after Saint-Saëns's First Violin Sonata in D Minor, Op. 75 (1885), and César Franck's Violin Sonata in A Major (1886) had entered the repertoire.Footnote 23
Such advocacy from Fauré's former teacher, close friend and luminary of French music was essential to his early reception in Paris. The sonata would go on to play a similarly important role in his American reception, bridging these two musical worlds. Aaron Copland said of Fauré's sonata: ‘Even in America, I believe, it is not altogether unknown or unplayed’.Footnote 24 This was an understatement, at least in Boston, where it had enjoyed a long performance history, beginning with Loeffler's performance on 28 January 1892 in Boston's Union Hall. Loeffler, a respected soloist, associate concertmaster of the BSO, composer and instructor, had already performed the sonata in a casual meeting with John Singer Sargent (as discussed above). The 1892 performance, however, signifies the beginning of Loeffler's long-term public advocacy for Fauré (again, not unlike that of Saint-Saëns in Paris), and of this sonata in particular, through his recitals, those of his students, and his edition for the Boston Music Company (1919).Footnote 25 Loeffler performed the sonata with pianist Carl Baermann in a concert that also included Mozart's Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K478, and Beethoven's Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97. The sonata stood well alongside the familiar works, as indicated in Elson's review in the Boston Daily Advertiser.Footnote 26 He comments, ‘The novelty of the evening was the sonata by Fauré; it is one of the best new works which has been produced in Boston for some time’.Footnote 27 Elson, who grew to admire the composer, unwittingly reveals how little known Fauré was in Boston at the time, even to him. He comments, ‘Gabriel Fauré is a pupil of Saint Saens [sic], and ranks as one of the very best of the young French composers’.Footnote 28 At this point Fauré was 46 years old and long past his student years with Saint-Saëns. Elson suggests that the sonata, ‘certainly shows a master hand in the technique of writing, and a decidedly original and musical fund of ideas’.Footnote 29 He remarks of the third movement,
The Scherzo is one of the most original and unique things we have heard lately; it is very dainty and crisp and fairly bristles with difficulties for the players, especially in the matter of maintaining a perfect ensemble. The playing of this and the last movement woke the audience up to a high level of enthusiasm.Footnote 30
In his review, Elson does not refer to any other compositions by Fauré, and expresses his approval based solely on Loeffler's performance of the sonata; however, he goes as far as to suggest that, ‘[Fauré] is a writer who is certain to rank high in the annals of music, and who bids fair, in the near future, to occupy the position in the music of France which Saint Saens [sic] has held’.Footnote 31
In the years following Loeffler's premiere, numerous violinists performed the sonata in Boston, including Eugène Ysaÿe and Franz Kneisel, among others.Footnote 32 Overall, the reviews present a tone of appreciation similar to that of Elson, with most critics confidently predicting its enduring place within the repertoire. One exception to this otherwise warm response followed a performance by Loeffler's student, Gertrude Marshall (with pianist Heinrich Gebhard) in a concert by the American String Quartet in Steinert Hall, 25 March 1912.Footnote 33 For Kenneth Macgowan, writing in the Boston Evening Transcript, ‘The piece no doubt has its historical importance. But it is nevertheless a long-winded experiment, involved, uncertain, unmelodic, inept. In plain English, it is stupid’.Footnote 34 Still, he gives credit for its inclusion here. Even while practically eviscerating the composition, he observes, ‘it gave us an opportunity of taking stock of the newer Frenchman once more. We have heard much of Fauré's music, and yet the newness of it is not completely exhausted’.Footnote 35 And, indeed, 20 years after Loeffler's premiere (and his ongoing advocacy of the sonata), Fauré's music in general had grown familiar to Bostonians, but was still broadly recognized as new enough to be considered worthy of discussion, especially in relation to his identity as a ‘Frenchman’.
La Naissance de Vénus (The Birth of Venus), Op. 29
For American audiences today, Fauré's name is most closely associated with the Requiem, Op. 48, despite its relatively late introduction in the 1930s. Long before that, however, several of Fauré's shorter choral works had been performed in the Boston area: Ave verum corpus, Op. 65, no. 1, Madrigal, Op. 35, and Le ruisseau, Op. 22, all were performed in Boston around the turn of the century.Footnote 36 However, it was the cantata La Naissance de Vénus, Op. 29 (performed in English as The Birth of Venus) that, beginning with the Worcester Music Festival (1902), went on to enjoy some two decades of American popularity that reached beyond Boston, and was for a while a veritable staple in choral music.Footnote 37
Fauré composed La Naissance de Vénus in 1882, as a commission for the Société chorale d'amateurs; the premiere took place at the Société Nationale de Musique, accompanied by Fauré, Franck and M. Maton on three pianos.Footnote 38 The vocal score was published the following year by Hamelle as a scène mythologique, and in 1900 by Schirmer (in English) as a mythological ode.Footnote 39 At approximately 24 minutes in duration, Vénus is more than twice the length of comparable free-standing choral works (for example, Brahms's Nänie or Schicksalslied). Paul Collin's poetry, which Fauré expresses through lush choral textures and solo vocal sections, is replete with the kind of natural imagery and mythological references so appealing to nineteenth-century audiences. The opulent seascape from which Venus emerges ranges from gentle undulation, to an almost unstoppable nautical force by the middle of the piece. Fauré favours short melodic passages and a rich homophonic choral sound, amid an unpredictable harmonic language already so familiar in his music. For performers, this carefully balanced approach offers sufficient expressive and technical demands to challenge their musicianship, while remaining accessible in rehearsal and performance. Indeed, the fact that Fauré composed Vénus for amateur musicians made it a particularly appropriate selection for the Worcester Festival Chorus.
The four-day festival was essentially a ‘pops’ concert series, blending novelties and well-established repertoire to stimulate interest and ticket sales.Footnote 40 A traditional element of the diverse programming was the inclusion of large-scale choral works performed by a four-hundred member amateur chorus (in the style of English festivals), and an orchestra composed of BSO players.Footnote 41 The 1902 festival included George Chadwick's lyric drama Judith, also given the previous year, Horatio Parker's oratorio Hora Novissima, heard twice previously, and Fauré's cantata, widely advertised as a ‘first at Worcester’.Footnote 42 Committee member Arthur J. Bassett had recently heard a student performance of Venus (in English) at NEC under the direction of Wallace Goodrich; on Bassett's suggestion the committee voted to include it at Worcester, and authorized the purchase of 400 copies of the English score the same day.Footnote 43 Advertisements and discussions were printed in American publications well in advance, and particular attention was given to Venus in the hope of sparking readers’ curiosity for this ‘interesting novelty’.Footnote 44
Venus was performed on the final concert (billed as an ‘Artist's Night’) on 3 October, as part of an eclectic programme that promised an exciting conclusion to the festival.Footnote 45 The effect in Mechanics Hall of the vocal soloists, imposing chorus and orchestral accompaniment (conducted by Goodrich) was probably similar to that of the Leeds Festival (1898) – though Leeds enjoyed the additional thrill of having Fauré himself at the podium.Footnote 46 However, the Worcester performance earned mixed reviews. While most critics agreed that Venus was well conducted, some expressed disappointment in the music as well as the performance. In The Musical Times Henry Krehbiel describes Venus as ‘rather inconsequential’, although he blames inadequate rehearsals at such festivals in general.Footnote 47 A critic for the Boston Evening Transcript presents a far more positive response, and actively applauds Fauré's music, if not the performance.Footnote 48 He believes the Worcester chorus was not up to the task, but suggests, ‘Fauré's “Birth of Venus” is evidently a gem of charming, graceful melody, and exquisite orchestration’.Footnote 49 Philip Hale offers a similar response in the Boston Morning Journal: ‘The characteristics that make [Fauré] conspicuous among modern composers are found in this “Birth of Venus”, which is a work for a small hall, a small and carefully chosen band of singers, a small and fresh orchestra, and an audience of friends’ – essentially, everything this performance was not.Footnote 50 Hale observes in this music the composer's style of ‘gentle melancholy’ and ‘well-bred intensity’ in what he calls a ‘pleasant glimpse of Paganism’, but remarks that the performers generally ignored the nuances of Fauré's setting.Footnote 51 Regardless of the disagreement among critics concerning the aesthetic value of Venus (particularly Boston's Hale and New York's Krehbiel), the audience reportedly enjoyed the music, and ‘began to applaud before the chorus had finished singing “The Birth of Venus”. They liked it so well that they could not wait.’Footnote 52
The 1902 festival evidently inspired a performance trend for Fauré's cantata in the United States. The 400 copies purchased for Worcester were loaned to various American choral ensembles over the next two decades – for example, the Massachusetts Institute of Arts and Sciences, the Fitchburg Choral Society and the Oratorio Society of Newton (Massachusetts), the Manchester Choral Society and the Keene Chorus Club (New Hampshire), and beyond New England, the Sioux City Choral Society (Iowa) and the Chautauqua Institution (New York).Footnote 53 In fact, between 1902 and 1924 it was one of the most frequently loaned works in the Worcester Music Festival library, second only to Parker's Hora Novissima.Footnote 54 Curiously, the library no longer holds any copies of Venus, and there is no record of their disposal. This might be viewed as a physical representation of the status of this piece for Americans: despite its high-profile introduction at Worcester, and subsequent interest among choral ensembles, Venus has been largely forgotten, the last known performance a mere excerpt given at a Harvard Glee Club concert in 1923.Footnote 55 Almost as quickly as it found its footing, it faded nearly into obscurity in the performance world, and is now almost entirely overlooked in favour of the Requiem, the Cantique de Jean Racine and other familiar choral works by Fauré.Footnote 56 Perhaps this begs a rhetorical question: would The Birth of Venus ever have been heard in the United States had it not been introduced in Boston, where a demonstrable admiration for Fauré and French music already existed?
Suite Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80
While the response to The Birth of Venus was fleeting, Fauré's orchestral music found a far more lasting presence in Boston's repertoire. Though he is not widely regarded as an orchestral composer, his suites Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80, and Shylock, Op. 57 (both drawn from incidental music for stage plays), as well as the Prélude to Pénélope, gained recognition through the efforts of various conductors. For the BSO, Wilhelm Gericke, Pierre Monteux, Henri Rabaud, Max Fiedler, d'Indy and Koussevitzky, all conducted at least one of these works between 1904 and 1924. NEC students also performed Pelléas, under George Chadwick (1904), Franz Kneisel conducted the suite at the Worcester Music Festival (1905), and the Boston Opera House Orchestra performed it under André Caplet (1911 and 1912).Footnote 57 In fact, the frequency with which Fauré's Pelléas was performed for Boston's largest audiences meant that it was probably heard by more people there than any other composition by Fauré at the time.
Of all of the composers inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck's play, it is likely Debussy who will loom largest for students of music history, given the landmark status accorded to his opera Pelléas et Mélisande, premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1902.Footnote 58 However, many ordinary music lovers and performers might well be more familiar with Fauré's suite, or at least the popular ‘Sicilienne’ (Fauré's later addition), even if they are not always aware of its connection to Pelléas.Footnote 59 In early twentieth-century America, Fauré certainly enjoyed significant chronological primacy: while Debussy's opera was eventually produced in New York (1908) and Boston (1909), it was in fact Fauré's Pelléas music that first became familiar to American audiences, both as incidental music, and as an orchestral suite. Fauré composed his score in 1898 for a London production by English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Tanner); his music replaced an existing score by Gabriel Fabre (not Fauré), used in the Paris premiere (1893).Footnote 60 When Campbell brought her production to New York and Boston (1902), the play was described by American critics as ‘peculiar’, ‘a somewhat dismal failure’, ‘teaching the public what to avoid’, and ‘better fitted for the library than for the stage’, although one critic for the Boston Globe also observes, ‘Music, and good, mysterious music, too, is liberally used to put the auditor in the proper frame of mind for witnessing the drama’.Footnote 61 This warm response in Boston, at least to Fauré's contribution, if not to the play, established a strong foundation for the introduction of the related suite two years later.
The BSO performed the Pelléas suite 16–17 December 1904, directed by Wilhelm Gericke; the programme also included Mozart's Symphony in C major, No. 34, Wagner's Flying Dutchman Overture and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, No. 1 (featuring Carlo Buonamici).Footnote 62 The Fauré and Rachmaninoff were billed as ‘first’ performances, adding a desirable element of novelty to the concert, illuminated by Hale's informative programme notes.Footnote 63 And again, Fauré's music held its own alongside that of such renowned composers. Still, while the performance earned favourable reviews, critics were not entirely convinced by Fauré's Pelléas music in concert. In fact, two reviews contrast significantly, one praising its diverse qualities, and the other seeming to question its value as a stand-alone piece. One anonymous critic for the Boston Globe enumerates the virtues of each movement, particularly the ‘Prélude’ and the ‘Fileuse’ (Spinning Woman), while another for the Boston Journal is less than satisfied with Fauré's Pelléas without the context of the play, and offers a somewhat ambiguous review:
Maeterlinck's ‘Pelleas and Melisande’ [sic] is on an almost unbroken level of gloom and dusk, and the Faure [sic] music, written for Mrs. Patrick Campbell's production of the play, is admirably in keeping … Such music cannot be attractive when played from the concert stage, nor was this the intent of this. Heard with the drama in the theater it must be highly effective.Footnote 64
Recall that American reviews of Campbell's 1902 production had essentially denounced Maeterlinck's play, hailing Fauré's score as one of its few redeeming qualities; yet, this critic seems to question whether this music is suitable for an unstaged performance. Nevertheless, the fact that he underlines the disjunction between the concert performance and the intended context of the music suggests an appreciation of Fauré's efforts, even if he does not offer encouragement for Pelléas as a concert piece in the future.
Despite the mixed response in 1904, the BSO performed Pelléas again the following year, in Worcester under the direction of Kneisel, and on tour with d'Indy, and later with Fiedler and Monteux. Expanding this music's local presence, Caplet directed the Boston Opera House Orchestra in the suite in 1911 and 1912, the latter coinciding with local revivals both of the play (with Fauré's incidental music) and Debussy's opera. But the suite found a far more enduring position with the BSO, and ultimately a broader American reception, through the subsequent efforts of influential conductors such as Koussevitzky, Charles Munch, Seiji Ozawa and even Copland (in a guest appearance). Unlike The Birth of Venus, Fauré's Pelléas was not destined to fall into a state of neglect in the United States, rather growing deep roots from the French seeds that had first been planted in Boston.
‘To the Memory of Gabriel Fauré, 1845–1924’
Fauré's death in November 1924 occurred at a pivotal juncture in Boston's cultural sphere: Isabella Stewart Gardner died in July of that year; John Singer Sargent followed in April 1925. Many musicians who had contributed to the expanding French repertoire of the city were now retired. However, Hale represented a major point of continuity and connection to Boston's musical past through his BSO programme notes and other writings; and Loeffler, though retired from performing, continued to teach and compose there. But it was the arrival of Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky (1874–1951) as the BSO's new director that proved most fortunate for Fauré's ongoing reception in the city. Koussevitzky's strong association with Paris offered Boston the opportunity to maintain its Francophile trajectory, as he continued to shape its musical soundscape. Biographer Arthur Lourié observed Koussevitzky's ‘long-existing attachment to and love for French culture’ and his efforts to introduce the music of French composers while he was still in Paris.Footnote 65 This advocacy for French music continued through his work with the BSO.Footnote 66 Fauré was one of the composers who benefitted from Koussevitzky's efforts, even in death.
By 1924, Fauré's American reception had already expanded beyond Boston through performances and critical writings. Copland's ‘Gabriel Fauré, A Neglected Master’ had recently been published in The Musical Quarterly, and American newspapers and journals had increasingly noted Fauré's music with interest, as well as his broader significance in French musical life. His death was also widely reported in American print. However, it was only in Boston that a true celebration of his music was organized. (This was to be the most substantial celebration of the composer in the United States until the ‘Fauré Festival’ at Harvard in 1945.Footnote 67) The programme was entitled simply ‘To the Memory of Gabriel Fauré, 1845–1924’, and was conducted by Koussevitzky on 5 and 6 December in Symphony Hall. Koussevitzky was the first BSO director to engage in this kind of memorial event, and his devotion to French composers is particularly emphasized in this way; Fauré was the first, but others (for example, Albert Roussel and Ravel) were also celebrated soon after their deaths.Footnote 68
The concert included Fauré's Prélude [Overture] to Pénélope, his Élégie for cello, selections from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé (‘Nocturne’, ‘Interlude’ and ‘Danse Guerrière’), and Beethoven's symphony Eroica.Footnote 69 (See Fig. 1) In its 1919 premiere with the BSO, the prelude had disappointed at least one critic, who compared it unfavourably to the ‘exquisite miniatures’ of Fauré's mélodies.Footnote 70 The response to the memorial performance was far more positive, the descriptions of the prelude's ‘sombre coloring’ and ‘unperturbed emotion’ suggesting that it was better understood in this context.Footnote 71 The Élégie, performed by cellist Jean Bedetti (who later recorded this piece with the BSO), created a funereal atmosphere; a critic for the Boston Globe observed that a second ‘elegy’ was heard in Eroica's ‘Marcia funebre’.Footnote 72 Ravel's music offered a direct musical connection between Fauré and his ‘most famous pupil’.Footnote 73 As expressed in the Globe, ‘Ravel is an ironist, and a better colorist than his teacher. His harmonies are more daring, though no more original and personal than those of Fauré. But how akin in tone their works are!’Footnote 74
Fig. 1 ‘To the Memory of Gabriel Fauré, 1845–1924’, Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Programme
Hale, still an essential guiding force for musical thought in Boston, found an opportunity to underline his unbroken admiration for Fauré through his programme notes for this concert.Footnote 75 Expanding on his already rich notes from earlier programmes, he includes a substantial biography, discussion of musical style, a summary of significant local performances, an extensive works list and an overview of recent writings on Fauré. He also addresses Fauré's ‘mistaken identity’ in America, specifically the confusion between Fauré and Jean-Baptiste Faure, French baritone and composer of ‘Les Rameaux’ (The Palms), a popular Easter selection.Footnote 76 Hale's notes not only provide the most comprehensive information on Fauré available to the contemporary audience, but offer particular value in illustrating one critic's consistent and long-term admiration of this composer, and an advocacy for his music sustained across decades, since his earliest writings on Fauré.Footnote 77
The memorial concert was a carefully crafted event, and it was met with sincere appreciation for the music performed in Fauré's honour, as well as for the composer himself. Following the concert, it was observed in the Boston Globe that:
Faure's [sic] music is the work of a man with subtle taste, the most musical skill, an aristocrat by temperament. How few composers between 1870 and the present day have in their works shown … the habitual understatement, the shunning of all that could be deemed exuberance that distinguish the work of Gabriel Faure [sic].Footnote 78
This could be heard almost as an echo of the past, as the new generation of critics observed Fauré's music for the first time and found similar elements of subtlety and understatement that Hale and his colleagues had long admired in this composer.
Conclusion
The memorial concert and the surrounding discussions provide an effective snapshot of Boston's familiarity with Fauré at the time of his death. Indeed, this event ushers in a new era of performances in a city that continued to embrace his music even while cultivating newer repertoire. Over the next two decades, many pieces introduced between 1892 and 1924 remained firmly in the local repertoire – if not The Birth of Venus, then certainly the First Violin Sonata and the Pelléas suite, as well as the Élégie, the Second Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 45, the Second Impromptu in F minor, Op. 31, the choral piece Le ruisseau, Op. 22, and the mélodies ‘Clair de lune’, ‘Au cimitière’ and ‘Les berceaux’, all performed frequently. During the interwar period, the continued development of audio recordings, and the newly available radio format, expanded the reach of this music beyond Boston, to facilitate a broader recognition of Fauré in a society that was rapidly changing.Footnote 79 As Copland urged his readers in 1924, ‘the world at large has particular need of Gabriel Fauré to-day; need of his calm, his naturalness, his restraint, his optimism; need, above all, of the musician and his great art’.Footnote 80 While Copland was addressing a broader audience, this statement was far less necessary to readers in Boston, who had already identified the value of Fauré's music, for its own sake, and as an emblem of the modern French music they so admired.
For this audience, the tangible experience of hearing Fauré's music played by the BSO and other fine musicians stirred interest during this early period of reception, and Koussevitzky and his successors, as well as generations of dedicated soloists and chamber ensembles, did much to maintain this path. However, it was the ongoing critical discussions that had begun under fin-de-siècle Boston's ‘Gallic spell’, and were sustained for decades, that propelled the local audience towards an informed appreciation of this composer while he was still living. Elson and Hill were essential in establishing a strong academic basis for these critical discussions. And Hale reached a particularly wide public audience through his BSO programme notes (often used decades later, more or less without alteration); his assessment of Fauré's music in these notes and in his other writings is often echoed by his successors, greatly contributing to Fauré's legacy in Boston.
To be sure, Copland's polemical invocation of the term ‘neglected master’ has a ring of truth in considering Fauré's overall American reception as of 1924. Even Hill, fully entrenched in Boston's musical life, suggested that same year in his widely distributed Modern French Music, that Fauré was still in need of promotion within the United States.Footnote 81 This call for continued advocacy was important to recognize, and Copland and other prominent American students of Nadia Boulanger, herself a devoted pupil of Fauré, would continue to nurture a much broader appreciation within the United States for this French master. This would maintain the strongest connection at the time to Boston through the Harvard Department of Music, where pupils of Boulanger or others sympathetic to French music were influential, a point most effectively underlined by Harvard's ‘Fauré Festival’ in 1945.Footnote 82 But the Boston of Fauré's lifetime had already gained far more than a passing acquaintance with this composer. Through the mutual and ongoing efforts of performers and critics, his music not only became established earlier and far more extensively than in any other American city, but truly found a home away from home, remaining part of the local repertoire long after that ‘Gallic spell’ had first been cast.
